Uninsured Trauma and Crash Victims More Likely To Die In Emergency Rooms

A disturbing new Harvard study reports that emergency room trauma patients are more likely to die than their insured counterparts.

The findings are in this months Archives of Surgery. See: http://archsurg.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/144/11/1006?home

Heretofore, it had been assumed by health care providers that laws such as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, served to ensure that uninsured victims of car crashes, industrial accidents and other traumatic injuries, would receive the same care and outcomes as insured patients.

The main measure used in this study, " In-hospital death rate after blunt or penetrating traumatic injury" demonstrated that the outcomes for unisured patients was significantly worse. The precise reasons for this phenomenon are not presently known.